This invention relates to self-watering growing systems. These typically include a growing medium, a reservoir of liquid and a means for transporting the liquid to the growing medium.
Proposals for self-watering systems that consist of automatic pumping or gravity feeding systems are wasteful. They may require energy to run. They also may deliver too much water, which is unhealthy for the plants, or they may require expensive sensing and control systems. If a watering system directs water onto the plants and/or onto the upper surface of the soil, the plant roots may tend toward the surface and remain shallow, which may also be unhealthy for the plants and may deplete the surface of nutrients, limiting the plants' growth. Such surface watering systems also lead to unnecessary evaporation directly into the atmosphere.
Some self-watering systems have been proposed in which water has been led by wicking from a reservoir to soil beneath plants, but these have required too frequent liquid replenishment or other attention, and they have had problems of limited wicking ability, difficulty of mass production manufacture, limited water reservoir capacity, over or under moisturizing, non-uniform moisturizing, and other problems that are overcome or reduced by the present invention.